Time

Recently I have been thinking about what I’ll call the commodity of time.  From the minute we become aware of our surroundings, able to react and think, time is there. 

As a child, there always seems to be ample time—in fact, time can seem to drag, particularly if you are anticipating an event. I can remember when I was 3 years that I didn’t think Christmas would EVER arrive (apparently I had really enjoyed my Christmas as a 2-1/2 year old).

So time has always been there for us—always existed.  That is not to say that we should take this commodity for granted. When you lose a friend or loved one to death, you begin to start thinking of mortality and time ended, as we know it. After all, the minute we are born, we start the grand adventure to another life through the door called death.  We hark back to the date and time we were born and it is known as our birth day. Days, minutes, all a marker of time.

People seem to enjoy starting collections for me, although I personally stopped doing much collecting long ago (except for certain antique china patterns). I know that for years I lived by the tyranny of the clock and I still have a small collection of clocks to remind me of that fact.  

 

So back to my thoughts on time. I am slowly reading a book my sister-in-law gave me called The Gift of Time. It’s about growing old gracefully (and graciously). As it has been several years since AARP first sent me some of their propaganda, I am pretty close to being a not quite young senior citizen, so this book is quite appropriate for me.

As The Gift mentions, and as I had already noticed, the idea of time’s endless quantity, has definitely changed. I come from a fairly long-lived family, so the gene pool might predict that I could likely live into my 80’s or even 90’s. That means I may have 15 or more years of  time left on this earth to accomplish whatever God has in mind for this stage of my life—or not.

To a child or teenager that sounds like a long time. To me it sounds like a drop in the bucket of Time (which it is). Since my natural proclivity is to waste time, that characteristic really is an insult to God since He has given it (time) to me in the first place.

If this motivates you not to waste this gift-- great. It has made me take a long, serious look at it. Actually, it is biblical to consider the gift of time carefully because the psalmist says in Psalm 90:12“Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”